Miriam Toews was born in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba. She has published five novels and a memoir of her father, and is the recipient of numerous literary awards in Canada, including the Governor Generals Literary Award (for A Complicated Kindness) and the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize (for The Flying Troutmans). In 2010 she received the prestigious Writers Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Irma Voth is Toewss most recent novel. She lives in Toronto.

Unrated Critic Reviews for A Complicated Kindness

Kirkus Reviews

It’s all on the gloomy side, but, if Nomi is to be believed, that’s what Mennonite life is all about (“A Mennonite telephone survey might consist of questions like, would you prefer to live or die a cruel death, and if you answer ‘live’ the Menno doing the survey hangs up on you”).

PopMatters

The mother, crazed in her repression, spends one memorable scene ranting and screaming at her brother “The Mouth”—a strictly devout Mennonite leader who had rebelled as a teenager, tried to make his way in the world, and failed.

PopMatters

The mother, crazed in her repression, spends one memorable scene ranting and screaming at her brother “The Mouth”—a strictly devout Mennonite leader who had rebelled as a teenager, tried to make his way in the world, and failed.

http://www.januarymagazine.com

And while it's a long time before the reader discovers just what happened to Nomi's mother and sister, we learn right away that she is living in the family home with her father, Ray, the gently eccentric shadow of the man Nomi's mother married.